Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
That it is earlier than others is clear from the occurrence in some of them of chips from the sarsen stones. He therefore places its building late in the round barrow period, and sees confirmation of this in the fact that the round barrows which surround the monument are not grouped in regular fashion around it, as they should have been had they been later in date.
Its centre, in fact, was occupied by a sepulchral chamber built of big Sarsen stones from the surrounding hillsides; and in the midst of the house of death thus rudely constructed lay the mouldering skeleton of its original possessor an old prehistoric Mongoloid chieftain.
From the thick hedges on either side trailing brambles and briars stretched far out, and here and there was a fallen branch, broken off by the winds, whose leaves had turned brown and withered while all else was green. Round sarsen stones had been laid down in the marshy places to form a firm road, but the turf had long since covered most of them.
One of the sarsen stones is stained with copper oxide, and this fact has been taken to point to Stonehenge being erected somewhere in the Bronze Age that is, not longer ago than 2000 B.C. Excavations about twenty years ago brought to light a number of stone tools, fragments of pottery, coins and bones. Belonging to a long period of time, the finds were inconclusive.
Five minutes afterwards he began to find it very hard work indeed, though it looked so easy from below, and stopped to rest. By his feet was a rounded boulder-stone, brown and smooth, a hard sarsen; this he tried to move, but it was so heavy that he could but just stir it. But the more difficult a thing was, or the more he was resisted, the more determined Bevis always became.
Some little way along there was a rounded sarsen boulder not far from shore, whose brown top was so nearly on a level with the surface that at one moment the water just covered it, and the next left it exposed. By it we spied a trout; but the hill above gave 'Velvet' the command of the hollow; and it was too risky even to think of.
By the huge boulder of sarsen, whose shoulder projected but a few inches in stormy times a dangerous rock to mariners and then into the unknown narrow seas between the endless osier-beds and withy-covered isles. There the chart failed; and the known landmarks across the open waters the firs and elms, the green knoll with the cattle were shut out by thick branches on either hand.
A row of sarsen stones at irregular intervals were intended to afford firm footing to the wayfarer, but they were nothing more than traps for the unwary. Upon placing the foot on the smooth rounded surface it immediately slipped, and descended at an angle into a watery hole.
It is probably a "Sarsen," indicating that the church site was used for worship in prehistoric times or at least that it was a place of sepulture. There are several other curious records here that will repay perusal by their quaintness and unconscious pathos. One is rather ferocious: "STAY, PASSENGER, AWHILE AND READ YOUR DOOM I AM YOU MUST BEE DEAD."
To get into the wood was much easier than to get out, on account of the thick hedge, palings, and high sharp-sparred gates; but I found a dry ditch where it was possible to creep under the bushes into a meadow where was a footpath. The time of the apple-bloom is the most delicious season in Sarsen village.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking